When Did Honeybees Come to Massachusetts?
Every jar of Massachusetts honey has an immigrant story in it. The flowers are local: red maple, cranberry, sweet pepperbush, goldenrod. The bees are not. The honeybee came across the Atlantic in the holds of English ships, less than twenty years after the Mayflower.
Quick answer: Honeybees are not native to Massachusetts or anywhere in the Americas. English colonists brought European honeybees (Apis mellifera) to Massachusetts in the 1630s. A 2021 review in the journal Apidologie dates their arrival to Plymouth in 1637 and Boston in 1640, while an older USDA history suggests the first shipments may have come as early as 1630 to 1633. Before that, New England’s flowers were pollinated by native bees.
How did honeybees get to Massachusetts?
They came by ship, in hives packed by English settlers who wanted honey for food and wax for candles. Records from the period are thin, so historians give slightly different dates:
- 1622: the first recorded honeybees in English North America arrive in Virginia.
- 1630 to 1638: a USDA history of American beekeeping by Everett Oertel (1980) says one or more shipments reached Massachusetts between 1630 and 1633, with others probably between 1633 and 1638.
- 1637 and 1640: a 2021 review by Madeline Carpenter and Brock Harpur in Apidologie dates the introductions to Plymouth in 1637 and Boston in 1640.
Either way, honeybees were living in the Massachusetts colonies by the late 1630s.
How did honeybees spread across America?
By swarming, and by trade. A healthy colony splits each spring, and half the bees fly off with the old queen to find a new home in a hollow tree. Those wild swarms moved west on their own, while settlers carried hives with them. Carpenter and Harpur describe both routes carrying honeybees west to the Mississippi.
The bees often arrived before the settlers did. Thomas Jefferson wrote in Notes on the State of Virginia (1785) that bees spread “a little in advance of the white settlers,” and that Native Americans called them “the white man’s fly” and saw their arrival as a sign that settlement was coming. Some historians doubt how widely that name was really used, since the accounts come from colonists.
What pollinated Massachusetts before honeybees?
Native bees, and plenty of them. A 2022 checklist by Michael Veit and colleagues in the Journal of the Kansas Entomological Society counted about 390 bee species recorded in Massachusetts. Only 16 of them came from other continents, and the honeybee is one. The rest, including bumblebees, mining bees, mason bees, sweat bees and carpenter bees, were here first.
Some of our most famous local crops grew up with those native bees. Cranberries and blueberries are North American plants, pollinated for thousands of years by bumblebees and other wild bees. Today cranberry growers on the South Coast also rent honeybee hives during bloom, because a modern bog has more flowers than wild bees can cover. Our post on how honeybees pollinate cranberries explains how that works.
Are there wild honeybees in Massachusetts today?
Yes. Swarms that escape from beekeepers’ hives still move into hollow trees, walls and chimneys, just as they did in colonial times. Most wild colonies struggle to survive more than a few years now because of varroa mites, a parasite that reached the United States in 1987. If you find a swarm hanging from a branch on the South Coast, call us for swarm retrieval and we’ll give it a home.
Frequently asked questions
Are honeybees native to North America?
No. The western honeybee (Apis mellifera) is native to Europe, Africa and western Asia. Europeans brought it to North America in the 1600s, first to Virginia around 1622 and to Massachusetts in the 1630s.
Did Native Americans keep bees?
Not honeybees, which weren’t here. In Central America, the Maya kept native stingless bees for honey long before Europeans arrived, but there was no beekeeping tradition in New England before colonists brought honeybees.
What is the oldest beekeeping record in Massachusetts?
Records from the 1630s mention shipments of honeybees to the Massachusetts colonies. Historians disagree on the exact first year, with dates ranging from 1630 to 1640, because few written records from that time survive.
How many bee species live in Massachusetts?
About 390 bee species have been recorded in Massachusetts, according to a 2022 state checklist. All but 16 of them are native. The honeybee is one of the introduced species.
Is local honey made by native bees?
No. Honey in jars is made by honeybees, which aren’t native. Native bees such as bumblebees store only small amounts of nectar, not enough to harvest. The flowers, though, are local, which is what gives South Coast honey its flavor.
Sources
- Carpenter MH, Harpur BA. “Genetic past, present, and future of the honey bee (Apis mellifera) in the United States of America.” Apidologie, 2021.
- Oertel E. “History of beekeeping in the United States.” In Beekeeping in the United States, USDA Agriculture Handbook 335, 1980.
- Veit MF, Ascher JS, Milam J, Morrison FR, Goldstein PZ. “A checklist of the bees of Massachusetts (Hymenoptera: Apoidea: Anthophila).” Journal of the Kansas Entomological Society, 2022.
- Jefferson T. Notes on the State of Virginia, 1785.
For a longer view of how people and bees found each other, from Egyptian clay hives to the Langstroth frame, read our history of beekeeping.